This week I conducted an in-service at Washington Elementary. We were spending an entire day (intermediate grades one day, primary the next) learning about using a mobile computer lab, The new Mac operating system, Google Tools, and anything else we had time for!
As an opening activity to get to know everyone and build community, I took Jon Gordon's advice and had everyone formulate a word that they would use as a focus for the year. I then modeled a tool called Wordle to show them how they could quickly take a collection of text and turn it into an image.
After we created the image, we had a discussion about how we could use this tool in our classrooms. Ideas were posting sight words, spelling words, vocabulary words...we also talked about using characteristics to describe a person, event or place. Lots of ideas were flowing!
I had to smile...as we were walking down the hall, there was a poster hanging for some organization. One of the teachers said, "Hey! Look! There's a WORDLE!" Sure enough, a real word example of how organizations are using the tool we just explored that morning was hanging on the wall.
Intermediate Wordle
Primary Wordle
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